(Newser)
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Alberta declared a state of emergency Wednesday as crews frantically held back wind-whipped wildfires that have already torched 1,600 homes and other buildings in Canada's main oil sands city of Fort McMurray, forcing more than 80,000 residents to flee. Whole neighborhoods have burned, but an Alberta Emergency Management Agency spokesman says flames are being kept from the downtown area thanks to the "herculean'" efforts of firefighters, the AP reports. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley flew up to survey the situation, while officials in the evacuation center had to bolt to the south of the city as flames edged closer. There were haunting images of scorched trucks, charred homes, and telephone poles, burned out from the bottom up, hanging in the wires like wooden crosses.

The blaze effectively cut Fort McMurray in two late Tuesday, forcing about 10,000 north to the safety of oil sands work camps. The other 70,000 or so were sent streaming south in a bumper-to-bumper line of cars and trucks. One resident tells the AP that evacuating almost felt like an apocalypse. "We had to literally drive through smoke and fire, vehicles littered all over the sides of the road, and we had to drive as fast as we could and breathe as little as we could because the smoke was so intense and we could feel the heat from inside the vehicle," she says. The Edmonton Journal reports that on Wednesday night, winds expanded the fire and the evacuation zone, forcing hundreds of people to flee the blaze for a second time.

In all the reporting about this story, no reference has been made to the number of firefighters working on these fires. No reference to what outside agencies are involved. Only one hard number quoted, about the Fort McMurray fire department itself, which has slightly more than 100 firefighters. In the 1980's, I witnessed a major wildfire burning through the eastern front of the Sierras, right into the outskirts of Carson City. Thousands of firefighters worked that blaze, from city, state, and Federal departments, with fixed wing and helicopter assets dropping water and borate. No effort was spared. More recently, Australia has suffered through terrible wildfires, and firefighting assets, both men and equipment, were brought in from as far away as the United States, to help out. Where is the unified effort, national and international, to attack these Fort McMurray fires with all available assets? Has the United States been asked for help, or has it offered help? What is Ottawa doing, to aggressively attack this complex of wildfires?